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There's no doubt that the rules of the game in the Senate need to be changed - and no doubt that the dysfunction has bipartisan roots. But no matter what rules reforms might be instituted to unclog the flow of work, there is a deeper problem of culture and personal leadership. I worked in the Senate 20 years ago, for Oklahoma Democrat David Boren. In retrospect, that was the end of an era. It's not just that there was a center then, with Democrats like Boren and Bradley and Republicans like Cohen and Chafee who could get elected in their states and build bipartisan coalitions in the Senate and thus held the balance of power. It's that the culture of the Senate then had not yet tipped into today's hyper speed, internet-fed polarization, posturing, and point-scoring.

How does a culture tip? How does it tip back? Rules matter, and so does the larger media and political environment. But within the institution, unspoken norms and relationships matter at least as much. We need a bipartisan core of senators willing, perhaps in private at first but then very publicly, to lock arms and say, "Enough of the games. Let's try in earnest to work together." Naive, I know. But it takes only one member to start a contagion of civility in the Senate.

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